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Authorship as Alchemy: Subversive Writing in Pushkin, Scott, Hoffmann (review)
- The Comparatist
- The University of North Carolina Press
- Volume 20, May 1996
- pp. 205-206
- 10.1353/com.1996.0024
- Review
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
THE COMPAnATIST DAVID GLENN KROPF. Authorship asAlchemy: Subversive Writing in Pushkin, Scott, Hoffmann. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994. 273 pp. The starting place for this study is the question posed by Foucault: "What is an author?" Following Foucault, Kropflooks at the author less as a person and more as a function, a social institution which in some real ways is beyond the control of the writer, based as it is on an identity established by previous publications. Kropf examines briefly the historical forces at work in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which led to professional literary authors, particularly the legal and financial ramifications of copyright protection. His principal focus is the question ofa writer's ability to subvert the institution ofauthorship and escape the fixed identity that entails. This line ofinquiry leads to a host ofinteresting questions related to writing and publishing in the Romantic period and beyond: Is an author the sum total of all his/her published works? How can an author create a new/ changed identity in the literary marketplace? What is the relationship ofthe author to fictional artist-protagonists? Kropfis particularly interested in how characters in the works discussed tend to have identities and establish relationships which parallel those ofthe writers and their works. Kropf begins with a discussion of literary libertines (Don Juan, de Sade, Laclos), as examples ofthe type ofcharacters who cannot or will not be "fixed" in their identities. Libertines necessarily devalorize the past, which, as Kropfpoints out, has interesting implications for narration—libertine narratives tend toward forms that highlight the present such as the epistolary novel. The discussion of libertine narratives functions as a prelude to the major focus on three writers: Pushkin, Scott, and Hoffmann. Kropfdiscusses the authors in the context ofhow they coped with the paradox that the same copyright laws which allowed them to make a living also tended to typecast them as particular kinds ofauthors. In discussing the short story, "The History ofthe Village ofGoriukino," Pushkin chose the pseudonym ofBelkin to isolate his attempts at prose from the author Pushkin, whose identity was established through poetry. Thus, argues Kropf, the "History" is not only the account ofBelkin's attempt to become an author, but also ofPushkin's attempt to subvert the processes ofauthorization. The latter, he argues, is the true subject matter ofthe text. Scott faced a similar problem in embarking in the untried field ofhistorical fiction. Scott subverted society's identification ofhim as a poet by publishing his novels anonymously. Kropfdiscusses how the relationship ofScott to Waverley parallels the characterization ofthe novel's protagonists. Just as Waverley has changing identities throughout the novel, Scott's own relationship to the novel is equally multiple through the use of a variety of sources, citations, and anecdotes; Kropf defines, quite rightly, the relationship as that of foster-father. Kropfs most ambitious and original discussion is ofHoffmann. He discusses three important works, beginning with a convincing analysis of"Don Juan," followed by, to my mind, a less satisfying discussion of"Das Fräulein von Scuderi" —I can't quite see Cadillac as an author who kills in order to steal back hisjewels to "prevent himself from falling into the hands of others" (171). The analysis of Kater Murr is, on the other hand, perceptive and enlightening; it makes abundant sense to see the novel as a kind ofalchemical literary laboratory in which Hoffmann Vol. 20 (1996): 205 BOOK NOTES is experimenting with different combinations and "alloys," mixing together the narratives ofthe cat-author Murr and the musician-artist Kreisler. Although Kropfis generally on target with his readings, I believe he misses much of the irony in Hoffmann, particularly in his discussion ofthe author's use ofclichés. This is a highly readable and insightful book, one which makes intelligent and appropriate use of a variety of literary theories and methodologies (Deleuze and Guattari, Jakobson, Bakhtin, reader-response theory). Inevitably, given its limited scope, it is more satisfying in the light it sheds on individual works than in its elucidation ofthe general issues ofgenre and the institution of literary authorship. Robert Godwin-Jones Virginia Commonwealth University ROBERT MCGAHEY. The Orphic Moment: Shaman to Poet Thinker in Plato, Nietzsche, andMallarmé (SUNY Series...